


The Grandfather Paradox

by myoldlodger



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: I have no idea, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicide Attempt, is it suicide to kill your younger self
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:02:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22539802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myoldlodger/pseuds/myoldlodger
Summary: The Master comes up with his most cunning plan yet, a plot to stop all of this charade at its source. He was going to kill his younger self to prevent his future misdeeds, fully knowing that such an act could rip a hole in the fabric of space and time itself. The Doctor isn't too happy about that proposition.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who)
Kudos: 22





	The Grandfather Paradox

Woosh. Woosh. Woosh. Woosh.

If The Master had been off to do anything else just then he’d have cared how embarrassing it might have looked to park (rather badly) a rickety old Type 40 with the breaks stuck in, but he did not care anymore about something as trivial as that.

He staggered from his TARDIS’ door (though it was not often the thing even had a door), and set foot upon familiar soil in what seemed like the first time in forever. The breeze was cool that day and the orange sky turning blue smelled of rust and sulphur. Home. 

There was no time to get sentimental. He’d always detested the way those Time Lords and Gallifreyans dealt with things, those stuck-up, no good warmongering fiends… but hey, he was no different. Though the feeling of metal was burning in his coat pocket, he was not here to destroy the Time Lords of Gallifrey. Not directly. 

Gallifrey wasn’t an ugly planet. It’s ash-filled orange sky, vast lands of dry nothingness, and the cold and unforgiving faceless structures of the citadel spoke otherwise. Between the mountains of Solace and Solitude, on the continent of Wild Endeavor, a capital built on the ashes of another. Encased and bubbled and safe. These things could not hold candles to the soft winds and the leaves of silver, and the way the sky turned blue in the morning. It was turning blue now, the sky half orange still. He was not here to diminish its beauty and splendor, though he hated it. Not this time. Not again. Not directly.

This time it hit differently in his stomach, but The Master was not a man of second guesses or second chances. For once, just this once, he considered his current motive a gift. He was being charitable. Gallifrey didn’t know it yet, no, no one did. No one ever would.

Time Lords were infinitely brilliant in their thousand time-honored wisdoms, but they were incredibly stupid all the same. How easy it was to slip through the cracks of Time Lord society, seen but not really seen. How easy it was to trick people with their own creations. And, of course, how easy it was to get so very close to sealing the fate of time with your own hands. Stopping it all at the source was not only easy, it was absurdly simple. The cogs were all clicking into place.

He watched as the Gallifreyan students, unbeknownst of the harshness of reality, had shuffled on with their lives. It was only one that interested him. That is to say, himself. 

One of the age old questions of time travel is what might happen were you to go back in time and kill your grandfather, thus preventing your own existence? The Master was eager to execute the next best thing. Perception filter not even so much as alerting the younger Koschei, who was well past the drums but not quite completely lost, The Master had resorted to a method which might make past incarnations of himself cringe, but he knew how effective it could be to snuff out a Time Lord. All it would take was a little twitch of his finger upon the trigger and time itself would implode, him included! And it would end. All of it would finally, finally, be over. All it would take was one little twitch.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” The voice was different. Different chords, different accent, but The Master knew that voice better than anyone’s. The Doctor.

“A little late to be trying to stop me, Doctor. I have the advantage. I’ve got a weapon! One step closer to me and all of time will begin to rewrite itself. You lose either way!” This ‘you’ve already lost’ speech was so practiced he didn’t even have to look at The Doctor to do it.

The Doctor raised his hands up in a show of diplomacy, not stepping forward any further. “Don’t do this. I know you want to. I know you really, really want to, but this is so much bigger than you. You’ve left no small print on the universe, Master. What happened to that quest for immortality? This seems pretty counterproductive.”

“You don’t get it, do you? All of that uncontested Master-of-the-universe stuff was just a childish dream. You of all people should know that I no longer care about that. Wasn’t it you who touched my soul and taught me the benefits of love and compassion? This is a charity.”

“This isn’t a charity, it’s a punishment.”

“All those people I’ve killed, Doctor. Uncountable people. The countless I burned… and I laughed. Don’t you think I should stop it at the source?”

“Well, sure, none of that will ever happen if you do. You’ll never kill, not once. You’ll never have the opportunity to. But, at the same time, you’ll never kill him either. You kill yourself in the past and you never grow up to do it. Hold on… no. Oh no.”

“Oh yes.”

“That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want to create a paradox large enough to tear a hole in the universe! You want to take everyone with you! You want to create the…”

“The Grandfather Paradox, yes.”

“But why? What do you gain? You’ll only be causing innumerable suffering. You’ll be destroying, quite possibly, everything that is or was. Master, your print on time itself is so integral to the universe that it could literally implode! Why? Why destroy everything?”

“You know what they say. Go out with a bang.”

“I can’t let you do this. I can’t let you destroy everything!”

“Oh, but you can. Need I remind you who has their finger on the trigger?”

The Doctor then paused for a moment, heaving a soft little sigh. He had to look at this from a different angle if he was going to get through to him, so instead he gave The Master an illusion of conceding. “Fine. I suppose you win. This plan was just too brilliant to prevent. You win. Are you happy?”

“Of course I’m happy!” The Master’s voice just then, raised enough to prick the ears of some nearby Gallifreyans, but none really noticed the source. His voice had cracked. “Of course…”

“Well, end of the road then. Nowhere left to turn. Fitting our very last minutes are spent here at the Academy, together, on Gallifrey.” The Doctor mused, his tone rather calm given the situation. “Those were simpler times for sure. I remember how nervous I was. Do you remember the first day when they told us the very first rule of time travel? Do you remember what it was? Just three words.”

“Do not interfere. Ha! You’re one to talk. You’ve done nothing but interfere since you’ve left this place. Are you trying to guilt me out of this with meaningless rules? You know it won’t work.”

“Oh, not quite. I always thought that rule was rubbish anyway. The world would be a very cold place if I didn’t interfere from time to time.” He stepped forward, never raising his voice, and never moving too quickly.

“Don’t come any closer or the universe gets it.”

“I always thought…” The Doctor replied, “That there are times where the most important thing in the world is to interfere. When I see people who are lost and need help more than anything, people who’ve been totally convinced that there’s no way up and no way out… that there’s no one left in the world to save them... I find that the most important thing is to let them know in that moment, in that one crucial moment, that there is someone out there, no matter how unlikely, who is watching over them. That’s when I remind them that no matter how dark or how cold the world may seem, there's always a glimmer of hope.” He stood behind The Master, who did not protest, and rested his hand on the arm shakily grasping the gun, and brought his mouth to the villain’s ear so he may speak softly. “And I assure you, Koschei, that in his time… and yours… there has always been someone who cares a great deal about you.” And so, gently, The Doctor brings The Master’s arm slowly down, and The Master’s finger loosened on the trigger. 

The two of them looked on as the young man, Koschei of the past, spoke with a certain pride to a redheaded friend of his, their voices and the lights in their eyes echoing the older versions of themselves just out of their perception. 

And so, there in front of The Doctor, The Master only allowed a few tears to trickle down his face. It had been so very long since he’d cried, and he’d almost forgotten what it felt like. The moment where he was most vulnerable didn’t last. He spoke up. “Are you only doing this because you know the universe will be destroyed?” The Master asked, after a small moment of stifled silence.

The Doctor put each hand on The Master’s shoulders, turning him to face him. He looked him in the eye with an expression so serious and so determined that it almost startled The Master, who was more used to the bouncy sort of Doctor he’d been running from and to all these years. “No.” The Doctor said. “This is bigger than that.”

The Master scoffed, the very edge of his lip curling up just slightly into a smirk. “I’m bigger than the universe?”

“To me you are.”

“But don’t you remember? Evil villain, all the mustache twirling, totally irredeemable! The Toclafane, Utopia, End of The Universe. Oh, and it goes further and deeper than that. All those people I killed, all of that which I destroy, and destroy, and destroy… And what? You think I can just… change?”

“Well, everyone can change, can’t they? We change all the time. You had a beard once! So did I. Not at the same time, of course.”

“So you think you can fix me? A bit self centered, don’t you think?”

“Not fix, help. Help you help yourself. Now more than ever I know, looking at you now, and back then, all at once, I understand. I see that somewhere deep inside all of the homicidal tendencies and the god complex and the, well, you know - behind all that is someone who I know is scared, and lost, and lonely. Someone who learned the secrets of the universe, who stared into the abyss, and more so than anyone else… it broke your hearts. And so you went mad. But you are not just delusions of grandeur and episodes of mania, you are capable of growth. I’ve seen it myself in rare moments. I’ve seen what you’re capable of.”

“How do you know? How can you possibly know what’s gone on inside my head? How can you possibly think there’s any inkling of change, or remorse, or hesitation? How do you know I’m not just a cold, hardened killer?”

“Because you lowered your gun.”

“You made me do that.”

“And all this time it’s still been loaded and you haven’t tried to kill me or yourself. A year you kept me on your spaceship back in the 2000s. The Year That Never Was. You didn’t kill me. Whenever the situation is most dire and you have every opportunity, you don’t revel in the thought of my destruction anymore. You laugh, you talk, you’re all talk - but you never, ever, win. You don’t let yourself. That’s how I know.”

The Master said nothing then, perhaps for the first time he came up with no retort. So then The Doctor gently took the gun from his friend’s hand, and slipped it into his own pocket for later disposal. 

“C’mon then,” The Doctor said, “let’s get out of here.”

“Where will we go?”

The Doctor smiled a wide sort of giddy smile, possibilities bubbling in his mind. “Anywhere but here.”

“So what? Am I just your lap dog now? Your little damaged toy? I’m not going to parade around as one of your assistants.”

“Actually, I prefer to use the word companion these days. What do you think? The Doctor and The Master? No keeping, no restraining, no assisting. We’ll travel like we never have before. As friends.” 

After a long walk across the sandy ground of Gallifrey, between the mountains of Solace and Solitude, on the continent of Wild Endeavor, The Doctor offered his hand to his friend outside the faded doors of that ragged old box for the very first time.

And, though begrudgingly and with much hesitation, The Master took it.


End file.
